Events in History
- Jan 6 Patent for reducing zinc ore granted to Samuel Wetherill, Penn
- Jan 8 Dion Boucicauly's "Poor of NY" premieres in NYC
- Jan 9 7.9 earthquake shakes Fort Tejon, California
- Jan 15 1st first-class game in Sydney, NSW v Vic at The Domain
- Jan 24 University of Calcutta founded as the first full-fledged university in South Asia
- Jan 26 Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville delivers his design for a phonautograph, which created visual images of sound, to the French Academy
- Feb 16 Gallaudet College (National Deaf Mute college) forms in Washington, D.C.
Event of Interest
Feb 18 Chinese residents in the fledging state of Sarawak rebel against the "White Rajah" James Brooke
James Brooke
Event of Interest
Mar 6 Dred Scott Decision: US Supreme Court rules Africans cannot be US citizens
Dred Scott
- Mar 8 British seismologist John Milne is hired by the Japanese government as a foreign adviser (oyatoi gaikokujin)
Event of Interest
Mar 23 Elisha Otis installs his 1st elevator at 488 Broadway in New York City
Elisha Otis
Historic Publication
Apr 1 Herman Melville publishes The Confidence-Man
Herman Melville
- Apr 12 Gustave Flaubert's novel "Madame Bovary" published
- Apr 21 Alexander Douglas patents the bustle
- Apr 27 Establishment of Jewish congregations in Lower Austria prohibited
- Apr 29 US Army, Pacific Div HQ permanently forms at Presidio (San Francisco)
- Apr 30 San Jose State University forms
- May 1 William Walker, conqueror of Nicaragua, surrenders to US Navy
The Indian Mutiny
May 10 Indian Mutiny against rule by the British East India Company begins with the revolt of the Sepoy soldiers in Meerut
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- May 19 Americans William Francis Channing and Moses G Farmer patent the electric fire alarm
- May 26 US slave Dred Scott and family freed by owner Henry Taylor Blow, only 3 months after US courts ruled against them in Dred Scott v. Sandford
- Jun 1 Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) is published.
- Jun 2 James Gibbs of Virginia, patents the chain-stitch single-thread sewing machine
- Jun 5 Walter Woodbury and James Page open photo studio in Batavia (Jakarta)
- Jun 10 Britain passes an act putting Canada on the decimal currency system
- Jun 15 San Francisco Water Works organized
Event of Interest
Jun 26 The first 62 recipients are awarded the Victoria Cross for valour in the Crimean war by Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria
- Jun 27 Bibighar massacre of 120 British women and children following the siege of Cawnpore
Event of Interest
Jun 27 James Donnelly becomes engaged in a drunken brawl with Patrick Farrell, who suffers a fatal blow to the head. Farrell dies two days later, which makes James Donnelly a wanted man and draws the Donnelly family into the notorious feud
James Donnelly
- Jun 29 Battle at Chinhat (Indies rebel under Barkat Ahmed beat British)
- Jul 16 Sir Henry Havelock arrives at Battle of Cawnpore
- Jul 18 Louis Faidherbe, French governor of Senegal, arrives to relieve French forces at Kayes, effectively ending El Hajj Umar Tall's war against the French
- Aug 24 The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in U.S. history.
- Sep 11 Mountain Meadows Massacre, Mormons dressed as Indians murder 120 colonists in Utah
- Sep 12 423 die when "Central America" sinks off Cape Romain SC
- Sep 15 Timothy Alder of NY patents a typesetting machine
- Sep 16 Mexican constitution of force (fiercely attacked by Pope Pius IX)
- Sep 23 Russian warship Leffort disappears in a storm in the Gulf of Finland; 826 die
- Sep 25 Relief of Lucknow by Havelock & Outram begins
- Sep 30 US occupies Sand, Baker, Howland & Jarvis Island, south of Hawaii
- Oct 5 The City of Anaheim is founded
- Oct 5 Mormon pioneer Captain Lot Smith and members of the Utah militia destroy US army supply wagon train in Wyoming during Utah War
- Nov 9 Atlantic Monthly magazine 1st published
- Dec 16 Earthquake in Naples, Italy
- Dec 31 Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa as new capital of Canada
Birthdays in History
- Jan 2 Frederick Opper, cartoonist (Maud, Alphonse & Gaston)
- Jan 2 Martha Carey Thomas, American educator, suffragist, linguist and second President of Bryn Mawr College, born in Baltimore, Maryland (d. 1935)
- Jan 6 Hugh Mahon, Irish-born Australian politician, born in Killurin, Republic of Ireland (d. 1931)
- Jan 6 William E. Russell, 37th Governor of Massachusetts, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts (d. 1896)
- Jan 9 Henry B Fuller, American writer (Under the Skylights)
- Jan 14 Alice Pike Barney, American painter, born in Cincinnati, Ohio (d. 1931)
- Jan 17 Eugene Augustin Lauste, developer (1st sound-on-film recording)
- Jan 18 Otto von Below, German commandant (WWI)
- Jan 23 Andrija Mohorovicic, Croatian meteorologist & seismologist (Moho discontinuity), born in Opatija, Croatia (d. 1936)
- Jan 26 Trinley Gyatso, 12th Dalai Lama, born in Tibet (d. 1875)
- Jan 31 George Jackson Churchward, Great Western Railway Chief mechanical engineer. (d. 1933)
- Feb 2 Jan Six, Dutch art historian/art collector
- Feb 3 Wilhelm Ludvig Johannsen, Copenhagen, Danish Botanist and Geneticist who provided evidence for Hugo de Vries' mutation theory
- Feb 9 Johannes T de Visser, theologist/Dutch 1st minister of Education
- Feb 17 Samuel Sidney McClure, Irish-American newspaper editor and publisher
- Feb 18 Max Klinger, German graphic artist/painter/sculptor
- Feb 21 Jules de Trooz, baron/premier of Belgium (1907)
- Feb 22 Heinrich Hertz, physicist, 1st to broadcast & receive radio waves
Robert Baden-Powell
Feb 22 Robert Baden-Powell, British officer and founder of the modern scouting movement, born in Paddington, London (d. 1941)
Robert Baden-Powell
- Feb 26 Emile Coué, French pharmacist (recovery by auto suggestion)
George Dayton
Mar 6 George Dayton, American businessman (founder of Target Corporation), born in Clifton Springs, New York (d. 1938)
George Dayton
- Mar 7 Julius Wagner von Jauregg, Austrian psychiatrist (Nobel 1927)
- Mar 16 Charles Harding Firth, British historian (d. 1936)
- Mar 22 Arnold Sauwen, Flemish poet (Along the Meuse)
- Mar 22 Paul Doumer, gov-genl of Indo-China/13th President of France (1931-32)
- Mar 23 Fannie Farmer, American culinary pioneer who revolutionised modern cooking through the introduction of precise measurements (Boston Cooking-School Cook Book), born in Boston, Massachusetts (d. 1915)
- Mar 27 Karl Pearson, British statistician (leading founder of the modern field of statistics), born in London (d. 1936)
- Mar 30 Leon Charles Thevenin, French telegraph engineer (d. 1926)
- Apr 5 Alexander-Jozef von Battenberg, Prince of Bulgaria (1879-86), born in Verona, Lombardy–Venetia (d. 1893)
- Apr 10 Henry Ernest Dudeney, English mathematician and puzzle maker, born in Mayfield, East Sussex, England (d. 1930)
- Apr 14 Victor Horsley, English physician and neuroscientist, born in London (d. 1916)
- Apr 18 Clarence Darrow, American defense attorney at Scopes Monkey Trial, born in Kinsman, Ohio (d. 1938)
- Apr 19 Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, French scholar and philosopher, born in Paris (d. 1939)
- Apr 20 Charles Louis Philippe Zilcken, Dutch painter and author (HW Knife Day), born in The Hague, Netherlands (d. 1930)
- Apr 20 Hermann Bang, Danish writer, born in Asserballe, Denmark (d. 1912)
- Apr 29 Édouard Rod, France-Swiss writer (Mishel' Tes'e), born in Nyon, Switzerland (d. 1910)
- Apr 30 Eugen Bleuler, Swiss psychiatrist (introduced the term schizophrenia to describe the disorder previously known as dementia praecox), born in Zollikon, Switzerland (d. 1940)
- May 7 William A. MacCorkle, American politician, 90th Governor of West Virginia, born in Lexington, Virginia (d. 1930)
- May 10 Hendrik Zwaardemaker, Dutch physiologist (olfactometer)
- May 13 Ronald Ross, British pathologist (Nobel Prize 1902), born in Almora, North-Western Provinces, British India (d. 1932)
- May 15 Williamina Fleming, Scottish-born astronomer (d. 1911)
- May 19 John Jacob Abel, American Pharmacologist (endocrine glands), born in Cleveland, Ohio
- Jun 2 Karl Adolph Gjellerup, poet (Poutnici Svetem, Nobel 1917), born in Roholte, Denmark (d. 1919)
- Jun 6 Aleksandr Lyapunov, Russian mathematician (Lyapunov exponent), born in Yaroslavl, Russian Empire (d. 1918)
- Jun 18 Henry Clay Folger, American CEO of Standard Oil and founder of the Folger Shakespeare Library, born in NYC, New York (d. 1930)
- Jul 5 Clara Zetkin, German feminist, Socialist, and Communist leader, born in Wiederau, Saxony (d. 1933)
- Jul 8 Alfred Binet, French child psychologist who invented the first practical IQ test (Binet–Simon test), born in Nice, France (d. 1911)
- Jul 9 Frederick II, Grand Duke of Baden (1907-18), born in Karlsruhe, Grand Duchy of Baden (d. 1928)
- Jul 14 Frederick Louis Maytag, American businessman, head of Maytag, born in Elgin, Illinois (d. 1937)
- Jul 21 A S C Wallis [Adele SC von Antal-Opzoomer], Dutch writer
- Jul 24 Henrik Pontoppidan, Danish writer (Promised Country, Nobel 1917), born in Fredericia, Denmark (d. 1943)
- Jul 25 Frank Sprague, American inventor who installed the first U.S. electric trolley system in Richmond, Virgina, born in Milford, Connecticut (d. 1934)
- Jul 27 E. A. Wallis Budge, English orientalist and museum curator (British Museum), born in Bodmin, Cornwall, England (d. 1934)
- Jul 27 José Celso Barbosa, Puerto Rican physician, sociologist and political leader, born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico (d. 1921)
- Jul 28 Ballington Booth, British-born American officer in The Salvation Army and co-founder of Volunteers of America, born in Brighouse, England (d. 1940)
- Jul 30 Thorstein Veblen, American economist (Theory of the Leisure Class-1899), born in Cato, Wisconsin (d. 1929)
- Aug 8 Henry Osborn, Conn, paleontologist/author (52 Years of Research)
- Aug 15 Albert Ballin, German inventor and shipping tycoon, born in Hamburg, Germany (d. 1918)
- Aug 18 Libert H. Boeynaems, Belgian Catholic prelate and the fourth vicar apostolic of the Vicariate Apostolic of the Hawaiian Islands, born in Antwerp, Belgium (d. 1926)
- Sep 6 Zelia Nuttall, American archeologist and historian, born in San Francisco, California (d. 1933)
- Sep 8 Georg Michaelis, Chancellor of German Empire, born in Haynau, Germany (d. 1936)
- Sep 8 Ida Henrietta Hyde, American physiologist who invented the micro-electrode and the first woman allowed to do research at Harvard Medical School and to be elected to the American Physiology Society, born in Davenport, Iowa (d. 1945)
- Sep 10 James Edward Keeler, American astronomer (rings of Saturn), born in La Salle, Illinois (d. 1900)
- Sep 12 George H. Breitner, Dutch impressionist painter, born in Rotterdam, Netherlands (d. 1923)
Milton S. Hershey
Sep 13 Milton S. Hershey, American chocolate tycoon (The Hershey Chocolate Company) and philanthropist, born in Derry Township, Pennsylvania (d. 1945)
Milton S. Hershey
- Sep 13 Michał Drzymała, Polish peasant rebel (Drzymała's wagon), born in Province of Posen, Poland (d. 1937)
William Howard Taft
Sep 15 William Howard Taft, 27th US President (Republican: 1909-13) and Chief Justice, born in Cincinnati, Ohio (d. 1930)
William Howard Taft
- Sep 17 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian pioneer in rocket and space research, born in Izhevskoye, Ryazan Governorate, Russian Empire (d. 1935)
- Sep 29 Conrad T van Deventer, lawyer/2nd-Member of parliament
- Sep 30 Hermann Sudermann, German writer (Honor, That Ehre, Frau Sorge), born in Matziken, East Prussia (d. 1928)
- Oct 2 Marthinus Theunis Steyn, South African politician and President of Orange-Free state (1896-1902), born in Winburg, Orange Free State (d. 1916)
- Oct 14 Elwood Haynes, American automotive pioneer (built one of 1st US autos), born in Portland, Indiana (d. 1925)
- Oct 29 Konrad Haebler, German historian (Early printers of Spain/Portugal), born in Dresden, Germany (d. 1946)
- Oct 30 John H Aberson, 1st chancellor (Dutch Agricultural University)
- Oct 30 Georges Gilles de la Tourette, French neurologist and namesake of Tourette's syndrome, born in Saint-Gervais-les-Trois-Clochers, France (d. 1904)
- Nov 2 Joseph Babinski, Polish-French neurologist (Babinski reflex), born in Paris (d. 1932)
- Nov 3 Mikhail Vasilyevich Alekseyev, Imperial Russian general and WW I Chief of Staff, born in Vyazma, Smolensk Governorate, Russian Empire (d. 1918) [OS]
- Nov 5 Ida Tarbell, American muckraker (The History of the Standard Oil Company), born in Erie County, Pennsylvania (d. 1944)
- Nov 21 Manuel Estrada Cabrera, 13th President of Guatemala (1898-1920), born in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala (d. 1924)
- Nov 22 George Gissing, British novelist (New Grub Street, Charles Dickens: A Critical Study), born in Wakefield, England (d. 1903)
- Nov 26 Ferdinand de Saussure, Swiss linguist (Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes), born in Geneva, Switzerland (d. 1913)
- Nov 27 Charles Scott Sherrington, British physiologist (Nobel 1932-functions of neurons), born in London (d. 1952)
- Nov 28 Alfonso XII, King of Spain (1874-85), born in Royal Palace of Madrid, Madrid (d. 1885)
- Nov 29 Theodor Escherich, German pediatrician (d. 1911)
Joseph Conrad
Dec 3 Joseph Conrad, Polish novelist (Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness), born in Berdychiv, Poland (d. 1924)
Joseph Conrad
- Dec 16 E. E. [Edward Emerson] Barnard, American astronomer (Jupiter's 5th satellite), born in Nashville, Tennessee (d. 1923)
Weddings in History
Wedding of Interest
Jan 10 Novelist Jules Verne (28) weds Honorine de Viane Morel
Jules Verne
- Jun 6 Sophia of Nassau marries the future King Oscar II of Sweden-Norway
Wedding of Interest
Jul 16 Confederate general Thomas Jackson (33) weds Mary Anna Morrison in Lincoln County
Stonewall Jackson
Wedding of Interest
Jul 27 Emperor of Mexico Maximilian I (25) weds princess Charlotte of Belgium (17) in Brussels
Maximilian I
Wedding of Interest
Dec 30 Confederate army cavalry battalion commander John S. Mosby (24) weds Pauline Clarke in Nashville
John Singleton Mosby
Deaths in History
- Jan 27 Dorothea von Benckendorff, Baltic monarch of Lieven, dies at 72
- Feb 7 Félix de Merode, Earl of Merode, Belgian minister of War and Finance, dies at 65
- Feb 10 David Thompson, English-Canadian explorer (Columbia River), dies at 86
- Feb 16 Auguste-Gaspard-Louis Desnoyers, French engraver, dies at 77
- Feb 16 Elisha Kent Kane, Arctic explorer (Kane Basin), dies at 37
- Feb 28 André Dumont, Belgian geologist, dies at 48
- Mar 11 Manuel Jose Quintana, Spanish author and poet (A la paz), dies at 84
- Mar 21 Abraham Jacob van der Aa, Dutch lexicographer (Biographic dictionary), dies at 64
- Mar 26 Wei Yuan, Chinese scholar and geographer of Qing Dynasty, dies at 62
- Apr 8 Mangal Pandey, Indian Sepoy (soldier) in the 34th Bengal Native Infantry (B.N.I.) regiment of the British East India Company, hanged at 29
- Apr 30 Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh, dies at 81
- May 2 Alfred de Musset, French poet (Lesson caprices Marianne), dies at 46
- May 11 Eugène François Vidocq, French criminal & police detective, dies at 81
- May 23 Augustin Louis Cauchy, French mathematician and physicist, dies at 67
- Jun 8 Douglas William Jerrold, British playwright and satirist (b. 1803)
- Jun 19 Alexander Twilight, American politician and minister, first African American to graduate and hold political office, dies at 61
- Jun 30 Alcide d'Orbigny, French naturalist, dies at 54
- Jul 2 Carlo Pisacane, Italian patriot (b. 1818)
- Jul 4 William L. Marcy, American statesman, dies at 70
- Jul 16 Pierre-Jean de Baranger, poet, dies
- Jul 19 Stefano Franscini, Swiss Federal Councilor (b. 1796)
- Jul 25 Joseph Napoleon Ney, French politician, dies at 54
- Jul 29 Charles Lucien Bonaparte, French prince of Canino and Musignano, dies at 54
- Jul 29 Thomas Dick, Scottish scientific teacher and writer (b. 1774)
- Aug 1 Charles Turner, engraver, dies
- Aug 3 Eugène Sue, French novelist (b. 1804)
- Aug 10 John Wilson Croker, politician
- Aug 12 William Daniel Conybeare, geologist, dies
- Aug 27 Rufus Wilmot Griswold, American poet, literary critic and editor, dies of tuberculosis at 42
- Sep 3 M Heinrich C Lichtenstein, German zoologist/explorer, dies at 77
- Sep 3 John McLoughlin, Canadian trapper (b. 1784)
- Sep 5 Auguste Comte, French sociologist (b. 1798)
- Oct 28 Louis Eugène Cavaignac, French soldier and politician (b. 1802)
- Nov 24 Henry Havelock, British soldier (War in Afghanistan 1838-39), dies at 62
- Nov 26 Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, German poet (That Freier), dies at 69
- Dec 3 Christian D Rauch, German sculptor, dies at 80
- Dec 17 Francis Beaufort, Irish admiral and hydrographer (Beaufort wind force scale), dies at 83